Wal-Mart rolling out online ordering in Dallas-Fort Worth

Attention Wal-Mart shoppers: It soon will be possible in North Texas to buy groceries and other household items without getting out of your car.

The retail Goliath on Wednesday announced that starting next week customers at eight North Texas stores — including far north Fort Worth, North Richland Hills, Bedford and Hurst — will be able to order groceries online and have their bags delivered to their car in the parking lot. The process will be comparable to ordering a to-go item at a restaurant such as Chili’s and having it brought out curbside, except customers will have the ability to pick from roughly 30,000 items such as bread, fresh fruit and toilet paper.

Some stores will offer the service as soon as Tuesday, while others might roll out their service a day or so later, a spokeswoman said.

A website giving shoppers a preview of the items that will be available online in the Metroplex will go live on Thursday, a spokeswoman said.

“Think about working moms who don’t even have a minute to spare in a day. Whatever is for dinner, they can order it online and pick it up,” said Wal-Mart spokeswoman Anne Hatfield.

Where it’s available

The Dallas-Fort Worth-area Wal-Mart Supercenter stores that will offer online ordering and pickup include: 9101 N. Tarrant Parkway, North Richland Hills; 8520 N. Beach St., Fort Worth; 4101 Highway 121, Bedford; 1732 Precinct Line Road, Hurst; 6001 Central Expressway, Plano; 12220 FM 423, Frisco; 1700 Dallas Parkway, Plano; and 8801 Ohio Drive, Plano.

How it works

The service is free. Orders must total at least $30.

After logging on, customers must register and place the items they desire in a virtual shopping cart. They then pay for the items online.

Customers are given a phone number to call when they get to their selected store. Each store offering the service will have a designated area in the parking lot, Hatfield said.

Once the customer calls the phone number, a Wal-Mart employee quickly assembles the customer’s order and brings it to the car, she said.

“We’re keeping all the things fresh,” Hatfield said. “The refrigerated items stay refrigerated until you arrive. We assemble it very quickly in a back area.”

In areas where beer and wine is sold, alcohol may also be offered online, she said. An employee will check the customer’s identification in the parking lot.

Some customers interviewed Wednesday at a Wal-Mart Supercenter in North Richland Hills said they would consider using the service. But among the skeptics was Rod Miller, a technology consultant who lives in Hurst.

“Being able to see the quality of what I’m buying is important to me,” he said, before heading into the store to buy pet medicine. “I have to see it on the shelf.”

Try it again

Wal-Mart is the latest company to expand online ordering, following in the steps of companies such as Amazon.

For the grocery industry, it’s a second try at the game. In the late 1990s and early 2000s, several companies, including Webvan and Peapod, made a go of online grocery ordering in North Texas and many other markets, but eventually shut down.

Another competitor, Kroger, offers a similar online ordering service known as ClickList at some U.S. stores, but not in North Texas, spokesman Gary Huddleston said. However, Kroger plans to expand ClickList in the near future, he said.

This story was originally published October 14, 2015 at 12:46 PM with the headline "Wal-Mart rolling out online ordering in Dallas-Fort Worth."